An elderly Jewish man whose arrest sparked a wild Borough Park melee said yesterday that cops roughed him up and then pushed him into a police van face down, declaring, “This is the way we treat a nigger.”
Arthur Schick, 75, told The Post that one of the arresting officers pushed and manhandled him and cuffed him without a word after stopping him for using his cellphone while driving.
Then came the terrifying moment when the cops tried to get him into the police van.
“I couldn’t climb up to the van, so they pushed me face down and they pushed me in, and one of the police officers who pushed me said, ‘This is the way we treat a nigger,’ ” an enraged Schick said.
Asked about the alleged racial remark, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said, “I don’t know that. I can’t speak to that.”
When the van arrived at the 66th Precinct station house, Schick was escorted inside, where he said cops shackled his legs.
“It was police brutality, and not expected in Brooklyn, New York,” an angry Schick said in his Ditmas Park home.
Schick said the trouble began at about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday after he made a purchase at Schick’s, a bakery he used to own, and was driving away. He said he was turning from 47th Street onto 16th Avenue – and talking on his phone – when a cop car pulled in front of him.
A cop said, “You didn’t see me?”
“I saw you when you stopped in front of me,” Schick replied. “You know you are on your cellphone?” the cop asked. “I said, ‘Yes.’ ”
Schick said he gave the cop his license and registration and then got out of the car.
“Before I could even pass the door of my car, a sergeant ran up,” he recalled.
“I asked him for his partner’s name and he pushed me, roughed me up and before I knew it, he handcuffed me,” he said. “He didn’t tell me a word. He didn’t warn me he was going to arrest me.”